I guess I'll put my 2 cents in...
To me, the look itself isn't that outdated. Personally, even on
Windows, I use the "Classic" theme because of the well defined edges
on GUI artifacts. That said, I do think the default GNUstep theme
needs an update. The gray is too dark, the icons do not follow recent
developments, and some GUI artifacts, like the knob, just look weird.
In my opinion, we don't need to re-do the whole thing, just update it
and bring it in line to today's monitors (I've heard it said here that
the default theme mimics the NeXT theme, and you could adjust the
gamma on NeXT monitors but it's not something anyone does today).
My suggestions would be:
- Lighten the color up a bit. Like I said, the gray is just too dark
compared to what everyone else is doing. See the GTK+ default and
Windows Classic themes, like it or not, people accept these as the
"default classic" theme for application.
- Use the Tango icons. I know people might not agree with this, but
the Tango icons fit better with almost everything else out there and
are kept fairly up to date.
- Minor updates to some of the images.